Hangar dance planned for airport festival

Get ready to step back in time and enjoy the music that lifted the spirits of soldiers, sailors, Marines and their ladies during World War II.

No one will blame you if your feet move to the beat of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and others re-created by The Beaver Bop-Cats at 7 p.m. June 15 in a hangar at the Indiana County Jimmy Stewart Airport.

The Bop-Cats, a 17-piece orchestra from Beaver County, is returning to play for its fourth consecutive hangar dance.

The dance follows a free supper being provided by the Jimmy Stewart Airport Festival Committee that will be served at 5:30 p.m. with the hangar doors opening at 5. Tables and chairs will be placed to seat about 100 people for the meal. Others are encouraged to bring lawn or other folding chairs.

As in the past, three or four distinguished veterans will be honored and other veterans recognized for their service at an awards ceremony at 6:30 p.m.

The meal and dance are being provided to give veterans an opportunity to recall the few fun times spent between battles when they danced to the music of the big bands and were entertained by Bob Hope and other entertainers in hangars, on airstrips, aboard ships or on any makeshift stage in the war zones around the world. The end of the first day of this year’s airport festival will give others an opportunity to experience the excitement of music being played for the sheer joy of it all and seeing couples move to their own beat as they dance cheek to cheek, jitterbug, boogie woogie and sway to a rumba or do the cha cha.

For more information and to help the committee prepare for the dinner, call the airport at (724) 463-3883 or visit http://www.jimmystewartairport.com/.

The airport festival opens at 8 a.m. June 15 and 16 with a pancake breakfast being sold from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. both days by the Civil Air Patrol. The festival also features appearances by several World War II-era planes, vendors and other exhibits.

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